Worldwide Developers Conference 2008 Rumor Roundup - Mac RumorsA couple of things I hope are released today, not that it really makes much difference to me.
1. GPS in iPhone. This is really my biggest complaint w/ the iphone. The google maps w/ cellphone tower triangulation works fairly well. At least it gets you in the correct general vicinity. But, it doesn't have turn by turn directions as a traditional gps has. With a gps, the iPhone could do some of the interesting things that the
Dash is pioneering.
2. Higher powered processor/better optimized browser. The iphone browser is absolutely incredible. It's so good that you start expecting it to perform like a normal browser which is where I usually get frustrated. Loading pages sometimes can be painful even over wifi. digg.com really seems to tie safari in knots. Probably a combination of a lower power processor and javascript heavy pages. Each iteration of the iphone will probably get faster as processors get cheaper. Having said all that, I still marvel at what this little thing can do. Pretty amazing considering I remember when video in postage stamp size was difficult for state of the art computers. (Yes I know, that dates me).
3. Direct Update - Right now, there are a number of things that still take a direct sync with a computer to update. Most of the time it's not a big deal, but I find myself wishing that podcasts and other things that come out periodically would download in the background automatically. Push email falls into this category though I don't find myself doing more then occasionally skimming through my inbox to see what's come in. I think one of the most killer applications for the iphone and anyone that owns more then one mac would be to have a synchronization tool that allows on the fly updates across all your computers. Granted, .mac already does some of this, I've just been too cheap to pay for it so far.
OK, the only other thing that I'm looking forward to is perhaps a preview of the next OSX revision. The rumors on the web seem to indicate that the next revision is going to be focusing on performance and stability rather then ground breaking new features. I've not had as many problems as some other seem to have had, but it will still be interesting to see what they show.
So, that's my list of things I'm looking forward to.
BTW, it really is bizarre how Apple is able to get people so excited about these events. No one else really seems to have that ability. Mr Jobs is really worth his $1 a year salary.
